First Irish genome sequenced

By Debora MacKenzie

THE Irish are genetically distinct from other Europeans – including their British neighbours. That’s according to the first genome of an Irish person to be sequenced, which turns out to have a host of unusual genetic variations.

Brendan Loftus of University College Dublin, who led the team responsible, says the unnamed Irishman – whom a genotyping study had already shown to be representative of Ireland – possessed 400,000 novel mutations of single DNA bases. Nearly 8000 of these appear to be inherited along with genes known to influence disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease and liver disease, so the newly discovered mutations may help shed light on the genetic basis of these conditions.

As an outlying island, Ireland should hold some genetic surprises, Loftus says. Indeed, the genome was so distinctive it shows that “the Irish genome inhabits a hitherto unsampled region in European genome variation”, he adds.

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